🙂 The InterFace AG sees to it that the modern nervous system of our planet functions …
Of course, we cannot do this all by ourselves. We do it together with many other small and big enterprises world-wide. It is a gigantic “co-working process” – and we try to contribute significantly.
If you view it in this light, we could be called something like an “infra-structure company”?
I had the idea of calling us an infra-structure company, because every enterprise should have a meaning. And said meaning cannot be the mere maximization of the shareholder value (see Alfred Rappaport). You have to provide more – and this is where infra-structure companies might have it easier. Because, as I see it, they are implicitly meaningful.
For instance, the railway and postal workers were a proud team, at least during the first half of the last century. After all, they were those who saw to it that the cars rolled and the letters and parcels were reliably transported. The power plants, too, had meaning easily explained. After all, it was due to them that we never had to live in darkness. The same was true for the municipal suppliers, who also provided water and disposed of sewage and waste, drove the trams, maintained the city’s entire infra-structure and much more. Even the central dairy and the public butchery made some kind of sense to me.
Not too long ago, all the relevant infra-structure companies were exclusively publicly owned. This system had both advantages and disadvantages. As I see it, the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. Basically, the only disadvantage was that the publicly owned companied tended to develop feudal structures. If that happens, the class of civil servants will form a privileged caste giving itself advantages and rights – while forgetting that they actually are obliged to practice special responsibility.
Unfortunately, it seems that this is partly what happened. Publicly owned companies were misused by the government in favour of run-down politicians. This too, did not have a beneficial effect on them. After all, a system where the leaders are chosen for some strange interests, rather than because they are the most competent candidates for the challenges of the job at hand cannot function, can it?
It seems that matters changed for the worse as time went by. Consequently, it was just a logical consequence that a time had to come when “the last drop made the cup overflow”! This is what happened at the end of the last millennium. And now, everybody wanted “privatization”. It became the universal cure for everything. And we threw the baby out with the water.
And then the meaning of the formerly so important infra-structure companies was gone. Huge federal concerns were created. They had to enter the stock market. And all of a sudden, the most important thing was not that every citizen was reliably provided with all the necessities. Instead, the most important thing was now the “Shareholder-Value”. The former federal giants dreamed of record profits and of becoming the leaders world-wide.
But neither shareholder value nor world-wide domination will basically provide the employees with meaning. The same is true for well-loved alternatives, such as the artificially introduced “Champion Mentality” (We are the number 1!) or the orientation of enterprises according to designer criteria: none of these can give meaning. In fact, all these methods have failed when it came to motivation and entrepreneurial culture. Consequently, many employees went into “giving notice inside”- mode or developed an “I could not care less”- attitude. See also my comments (Bemerkungen) on the “brand eins” June edition.
I know from personal experience that it was different in former times. My father was a civil servant. But above all, he was a railway person. With all his heart. For him, it was important that all the trains were on time. He did everything for his employer, the Bundesbahn. He was often sad when something did not work as it should have. And he worked hard to improve conditions.
In industry, too, I know another kind of mentality from former times. For instance by the then big enterprise with a great reputation “Volkswagen” under Herrn Nordhoff. But from early on, I also followed small enterprises with great interest. For example a small dairy plant near Augsburg. Regardless of its very common name, it has gained world-wide fame by now.
The first enterprise I consciously knew as a child was the meat plant Zimmermann. It was in the mid 1950ies and I had just started my career as a young learner of the alphabet.
The owners, the Zimmermann family, were the kings of Thannhausen, which was the place where my grandparents on the mother’s side lived. My mother had two sisters who were going to inherit grandfather’s farm in Sudetenland, which meant that they had never enjoyed proper training for a profession. As opposed to this, my mother had been permitted to study at university, because at the time the farm was to be distributed, she would not have inherited any share of it.
As we all know, the end of the German conquering strategy during WW-II was a huge Rollback (displacement) – and nothing was left of the family farm I never knew! According to legend, the former owners were brought into Bavaria in the last stock car. My parents called it expulsion. Since my aunts, believing they would at one time manage their father’s farm, had never officially learned anything, they were more than happy to work as unskilled labour in the Zimmermann meat plant in their new lives.
The income was poor, but the Zimmermann family made up for it by supplying their employees with good meat at very special bargain prices. In those days, I heard quite a few legends about this enterprise and the glamorous family who owned it.
Basically, the only reason why there was a railway line between Dinkelscherben and Thannhausen was the Zimmermann meat plant. Behind the company building, there was a tarmac from which the Zimmermann family often started their trips into the great wide world. And the Zimmermann family was definitely travelling the world extremely often. The stories about their alleged adventures were told among the employees.
And regardless of all the meat workers knowing full well that the Zimmermann family was doing a whole lot better than they, they found meaning in their work. Because times were improving and there was at long last again meat to go with the bread. The Zimmermann family were a well-loved employer who saw to it that people had jobs and they were adored by everybody. They were both the sun kings and the sensation of Thannhausen. The employees knew this and loved their glamorous and mundane Zimmermann family, regardless of the hard work and poor pay.
Well, this, too, was one way (even if, to me, it seemed strange at the time) for an employee to find meaning in an enterprise. Everybody had to work hard, and still they were happy in some fashion. As I grew older, there was a change in the stories of my aunts. There was less and less meaning and negative comments became more and more frequent. Wealth became the normal state of affairs and they discovered that work meant hardships.
It seems like the glamorous and rich Zimmermann family, too, decided one day that the development was no longer to their liking. Consequently, one day they sold their company to a huge meant concern and probably disappeared from Thannhausen. Perhaps they now needed more time for their “social obligations”. It seems that the new life in the world of luxury looked more meaningful to them than the entrepreneurial work with all its responsibility. But that is not something I would know.
However, the reason why I am telling this story is another one. I think that, in modern times, it would be difficult to give meaning to a meat plant. Even a family full of legends would not do the job. Instead, you will probably have to live the right values and have an entrepreneurial culture which will give meaning in the craftsmanship sense even to butchering animals.
As a general rule, it is quite difficult to give meaning to an enterprise. And I believe infra-structure companies have a natural competitive advantage – having a meaning that comes as a matter of course and which can be the basis for everything that follows. However, said meaning might turn to become the opposite if they turn private and then forget their major duty – which is providing infra-structure reliably and at a fair price. Instead, all they think about is turnover and profit.
And then I get the impression that infra-structure companies, in particular, had better be publicly owned. If that is the case, the advantage of a natural meaning will not turn into the opposite. Except that the “new publicly owned” federal concerns must not repeat the mistakes as known and listed above. Perhaps “good management” could contribute.
And perhaps this is also true for the – as I see it – ever so important nervous network of our planet we call internet and which our leading politicians calls frontier land. Especially in the “frontier”, freedom, openness and availability should be guaranteed by a democratic country! And, as a condition for the development of social consensus, this so important infra-structure for forming the future must be protected from attacks from all possible sources.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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